Not too long ago, I copulated regularly with a woman who screamed a lot during the act, invited me to attend an anal sex workshop with her, insisted on giving hand jobs in taxicabs (to me, just to be clear), exclaimed, "Fuck me!" with such enthusiasm and urgency that I couldn't help but believe her—and comply—and who shuddered and moaned when she had an orgasm, which was most of the time we shared nakedness, at least in my fevered and admittedly sort of credulous brain. She was 20 years younger than I, had been a professional dancer, and had confided, on our second date, before we'd even kissed, that "really intense sex is very, very important to me." In other words, I was—according to men's magazines, frat-house guidelines, and most of my male friends who watched more than 30 minutes of televised sports weekly—having great sex. Ideal sex. World-class sex. "Living the dream," one guy said. "Don't fuck this up," said another. "Does she have friends?" asked more than a few.

But to me, it wasn't ideal sex, it wasn't world-class sex, it wasn't even fun sex. To me, it was just bad. It was bad sex.

To many women—and men—that sentiment makes me like the bird watcher who, one misty and fateful dawn, glimpsed the incredibly rare and possibly extinct ivory-billed woodpecker (aka the Lord God Bird, as in, "Lord God, I cannot believe I just saw that ivory-billed wood- pecker"), and then, when asked by his ornithologist pals how his day had been, shrugged his binocular-bearing shoulders and muttered, "Meh," before slouching home to a nap and a microwave dinner.

Such a thing would never happen. Adventurous, orgasmic, shuddering, emotionally undemanding, former-professional-dancer sex with a woman 20 years my junior? Such a relationship could not bring a man anything other than unadulterated glee. A man who would complain about that type of sex does not exist. Right?

Gentle reader: It could. He does. L'enfant stupide, c'est moi.

Please don't misunderstand. I have no beef with loud gymnastic-rutting; younger women; out-of-the-way places; or moving vehicles. I'm talking about more complicated, emotionally distressing bad sex—the kind that, according to many women, couldn't register in men's lizard brains or, if it did, represents nothing but the tinny bleat- ing of an entitled oppressor...someone who can afford to bleat.

"The game remains rigged," ELLE contributing editor Rebecca Traister wrote in a New York piece about the sexual mores on college campuses circa 2016. She describes a world where "male sexual needs take priority, with men presumed to 'take' [emphasis ours] sex and women presumed to 'give' it to them." Traister went on: "Male attention and approval remain the validating metric of female worth, and women are still (perhaps increasingly) expected to look and fuck like porn stars—plucked, smooth, their pleasure performed persuasively. Meanwhile, male climax remains the accepted finish of hetero encounters; a woman's orgasm is still the elusive, optional bonus round."

Traister's overriding point was that by focusing, laserlike, on the issue of consent, many contemporary feminists have failed to address what's more commonplace and almost as pernicious: all the "joyless, exploitative encounters" that women have to endure. Kudos to Traister for acknowledging that consent is necessary but not sufficient for satisfying sex for women, but what she and her fellow females seem oblivious to is that my people have awful sex, too. I'm not talking about the sex that guys are allowed to complain about: the yikes-it-burns-to-pee sex, the what-do-you-mean-you're-not-on-the-Pill sex, the oh-shit-now-she's-into-me sex (the latter memorialized by the "Stage-Five Clinger" in Wedding Crashers). And I'm definitely not talking about failure-to-perform sex, a phenomenon with which all guys are familiar, and which few want to talk about. Including me. It happens. It's not your fault. That's all you need to know.

I'm talking about the bad sex that dare not speak its name. I'm talking about sex that men are ashamed to think of as "bad," because to us, sex is never supposed to be bad, because we're supposed to be simple creatures who regard women the way Rottweilers regard pork chops. There's no room in Traister's paradigm for a man who wonders whether a woman likes him, or his wallet; no room for a man who thinks he wants sex, then changes his mind. There's no room for a man who has sex when he doesn't want to because it's easier than listening to his partner complain, or accuse him of leading her on.

"Sex is never supposed to be bad, because we're supposed to be simple creatures who regard women the way Rottweilers regard pork chops."

"I've had bad sex," says William Ratliff, a 23-year-old student who lives in Berkeley, California. "Emotionless, quiet, unenthused. I remember feeling detached and just going through the motions mechanically. I remember discomfort after realizing that maybe I wasn't as down for this sex as I thought I'd been. It's not that I expected the woman to be loud or enthusiastic, but I was the one who wasn't doing that.... So the experience was ultimately meaningless, emasculating."

Sam Baker, a 23-year-old cameraman from Saranac Lake, New York, admits to another kind of bad sex. "I've had sex to spare her feelings, and I didn't want to have to explain to her that I didn't feel like [having sex] right then. I didn't want to go through that argument of 'Is it me, [or] are you not man enough?' "

"I don't like it when she laughs during sex, and it feels like it's at me," says a 34-year-old personal trainer from Manhattan, who requested anonymity. "And I don't like when, right in the middle of things, she starts picking at a mole on my back. It feels hostile."

Why trust me to testify about bad sex? Well, I've had my share. In eighth grade, I was a sweaty and nervous transfer student from a blue-collar neighborhood whose family had recently yanked him into a suburbia of pearl-bedecked mothers, manicured lawns, and good teeth. Proust had Marie de Benardaky; Nabokov's Humbert Humbert had his beautiful and doomed Annabel Leigh. Me? I had Elsa.

There I stood, grandson of a tailor, son of a paper salesman, the new kid, resplendent in an iridescent-green crewneck sweater identical to the one I'd seen a ninth grader from the football team wear at a bonfire the week before. It was New Year's Eve. I was sipping a ginger ale, desperately scanning to see if mine was the only crewneck in the room, when I felt pressure on the inside of my right calf. I looked down. There was a shoeless, stockinged foot rubbing up and down my calf. Attached to the foot was a slim leg, and attached to the leg was a brunette who had gigantic breasts by eighth-grade standards. She looked up at me from half-lidded eyes, a look I had only seen in movies before. I tried and failed to speak. She offered a delicate hand, attached to a slender wrist, encircled by a silver chain of silver hearts and polished turquoise butterflies. "I'm Elsa," she said.

"I kissed her. It was my first kiss, and even though it was tongueless, grinding, slightly bruising, and doubtless alarming to any girl who'd ever been sent away to boarding school on a morals charge, to me it was life-altering."

I'd heard of Elsa. "Nympho," a girl in science class had told me in a tone of voice usually reserved for the fish sticks the cafeteria served on Fridays. "Kicked out of seventh grade and sent to boarding school on morals charges," the guys at basketball camp whispered. "Insatiable," promised a ninth grader rumored to have gone to reform school. "Hi, Elsa," I said. She crooked a finger, and suddenly I was sitting next to her on a couch. "Do you like my dress?" she asked. It was peach-colored, with spaghetti straps and a fuzzy texture that made my stomach hurt. After answering in the affirmative and being informed that I was "sweet" and seemed like I'd "be fun," I put my arm around her smooth, white shoulders (she was wearing White Shoulders perfume, I learned later, which made me think she was an evil genius) because that's what I'd witnessed an eighth grader who already had a mustache do with his girlfriend. We sat on the couch and gazed at the party, and I snuck a look at Elsa. She'd turned her face toward mine, lifted her pointy little chin toward the ceiling, and closed her eyes. She was leaning in my direction. I kissed her. It was my first kiss, and even though it was tongueless, grinding, slightly bruising, and doubtless alarming to any girl who'd ever been sent away to boarding school on a morals charge, to me it was life-altering. In those 50 or so seconds (unsure what the proper amount of time was, I thought it best to err on the long side), I traveled the short but infinite distance from never kissed-a-girl to experienced. I was in love. The next day, I called Elsa's house. "May I speak to Elsa, please?" I asked her mother, who sounded drunk, but maybe because that was the way I imagined mothers of insatiable girls to sound.

"To the girl with the turquoise butterflies, I was nothing but a virginal transfer student she could toy with."

"Hi, Elsa," I said. "It's Jackson." "Jackson who?" Elsa asked. Is it reductive and unfair of me to blame Elsa for my inclination to associate things like shame, disappointment, inchoate rage, and self-loathing with beautiful women who kiss me? I've discussed that with my shrink, who says it is in fact reductive and a little unfair—to Elsa and to me—and that in any case, other men suffer from bad sex, too, even if they don't like to talk about it. Still, my experience with Elsa has served as a kind of template for less-than-happy sexual encounters throughout my life. Even though the kiss was incandescent, transformative, and arousing (it should probably be said that to an eighth-grade boy, the sound of crickets, or the odor of a burnt waffle, is arousing), it ended with my feeling humiliated, rejected. It ended with my feeling like I had been desired not for my learned opinions about Simon (the genius) and Garfunkel (clearly a stooge), or my A in social studies, or the way I could spin a basketball on my finger (I'd practiced all sum- mer)—all central parts of what I considered my one, true self—but for something that had nothing to do with me. My blue eyes? My green sweater? To the girl with the turquoise butterflies, I was nothing but a virginal transfer student she could toy with.

Later, there was the blond chef with the brunette nurse at a bar who sent me a drink and a note inviting me to a threesome, even though I didn't know either of them. After checking into a Super 8, we rolled around long enough for me to recognize the chef was far, far more interested in the nurse than in me. I felt, literally, like a tool.

ROBERT WHITMAN/THELICENSINGPROJECT.COM

Can I ever forget the copy editor at the newspaper where I was a cub reporter, who, after she rubbed her bare foot against my thigh while we were watching Hill Street Blues, and after I said I didn't really want to have sex, took off her shirt and said, "I don't really care what you want"? (Cub reporters are young; what they want, what they do, and what they regret are categories in a fluid dynamic.) There was the publicist who—as we lay together limbs entwined, hearts and genitalia melded; after I'd confessed my love, promised that I'd never hurt her, and sketched beautiful pastel word pictures of our joyous future together—commanded, "Shhhh, please stop talking. And put your hand there. No, there!" There was the doctor who screamed, "Oh, Bob! Oh, Bob," when we were in bed, even though my name isn't Bob.

There was the multiorgasmic yoga teacher who, when she wasn't contorting her body in ways that I had to admit were exciting and that definitely helped with my inner peace, was going down on me, or nibbling my earlobe, or doing something else to suggest we get busy, even if it meant I'd miss a crucial Big East tournament basketball game.

Late one night, as she was brushing her teeth, I asked her if we could not have sex, if we could just hold each other this time. (I felt something like I imagined teenage girls not named Elsa must feel.) She wasn't having it. "C'mon, you know how much I love you," I said, "how much I love sex with you. But I'm just tired tonight. Let's just be with each other."

"We don't have to have sex," she finally agreed. "But can't you just take care of me?"

Speaking for all men, isn't that our line? Wasn't she saying something we penis owners are supposed to say, because all we care about is getting off? And aren't our self-absorbed requests something all women complain about, even (maybe especially) when they give in to us louts?

"Our cultural narrative holds that women are bubbling cauldrons of hopes, yearnings, and fears, whereas men operate on a basic, binary (food and sex) system"

"Namaste, Sugarplum," I said, "how would you feel if I said, 'Hey, I know you're not really in the mood, but how about just a blow job to relax me?' "

She had no answer, but I have some theories. Is it because our cultural narrative holds that women are bubbling cauldrons of hopes, yearnings, and fears, whereas men operate on a basic, binary (food and sex) system? Is it because we're told, over and over, that to women, sex is a mysterious, sometimes unsettling, sometimes life-affirming act, and to men, sex is just...fun? And if that's the case, are we allowed any exceptions to the rule? What about the sexually gunslinging man-eaters? Or the sensitive and tender male hothouse flowers—meaning me and my ilk, a not-insignificantly-small group? From my perspective, feminism has done a great service to women by leaching judgment from female expressions of sexuality, allowing and blessing everything from celibacy to loving monogamy to recreational, selfish, even divorced-from-emotions sex. The bandwidth is narrower for men. Consider the guy who complains about being objectified, who longs for more talk and less role-playing; the man who wants an agreement about exclusivity before sleeping with someone. Which is more transgressive, a woman who likes whips, takes multiple partners, and shops online for sex toys, or a guy who says he just wants to cuddle? Be honest, now. Yeah, I thought so.

"What's more transgressive, a woman who likes whips or a guy who says he just wants to cuddle?"

You don't want to hear such kvetching from my kind? You think that after several millennia of objectifying and oppressing women, we should man up and quit whining? You think we'd "fuck a set of Venetian blinds," as an ex once told me? You think it's time for women to be the pleasure-seeking, emotionally heedless brutes so many imagine us to be? Fair enough.

But if you want that kind of sex, take it from a past practitioner: It's not all that. I've unleashed my inner Elsa on an undeserving population before. There was the time at summer camp in northern Wisconsin, when I picked up a platinum-haired, pink-lipped townie, made out with her next to the lake, and then, because I feared I'd never get another chance with another human female, lunged for her breasts. "Why is it every guy in the world thinks I'm a two-bit whore?" she spat, pushing away. That was exactly 17 months after Elsa.

There was the time I picked up a woman at a bar in Nebraska, during graduate school. We were both drunk. She was about 5'10" and bony, wearing a pantsuit and heels. She accompanied me to my house. It was the first and last time I prayed during sex. It turns out I was more drunk than I thought I was. "Don't let me puke on the Black Widow, God," I muttered to myself, as we ground together.

Thinking back on that sex, that quite-possibly objectifying, dehumanizing, occasionally even destabilizing sex I might have been not just party to but initiator of, I feel more compassion for the ex of mine who whispered once, during what I thought was a very close, loving moment, "Hey, don't forget about me down here."

What I think she was saying was that the thrill of the tall, dark stranger in the tux and the curvy dame in the plunging neckline both have a place; that velvet handcuffs and zipless fucks and steamy gropings and spirited games of "Pharaoh and the heathen handmaiden" have their place, too. But it can be a small, cramped place.

"I think what she would have said, if we'd ever felt comfortable enough with each other to have spoken frankly about such matters, was that sex where feelings don't matter is easy, and bad sex in that realm is even easier to fix."

I think what she would have said, if we'd ever felt comfortable enough with each other to have spoken frankly about such matters, was that sex where feelings don't matter is easy, and bad sex in that realm is even easier to fix. Move here. Do that. Harder. Slower. Faster. Put on the pirate eye patch. Take off the pig mask. Stop making that sound. Can't you move a little bit? Please, enough with the "Baby, baby, baby."

These complaints are variable, come from both men and women, and have everything to do with technique and nothing to do with intimacy. And really, how bad is that bad sex anyway?

Well, for someone who wants more than unencumbered endorphins and responsibility-free thrusting, it's pretty depressing. For someone who craves connection, it can be the very saddest of bad sex. That's what happened with my hand-jobs-in-taxicabs sweetheart. Except that she wasn't my sweetheart. I wanted her to be. I asked her to be. I suggested that we promise fidelity to each other and see each other during daylight hours every so often, that at least we promise not to sleep with anyone else. She laughed. "What do you think we have?" she asked. When I didn't reply, she laughed again. "Aww, did I hurt your feelings?"

When it comes to men, sad, bad sex and feelings, that's probably the biggest secret of all: We have them.

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